When in Rome....Italy Wants to Prosecute Burqa Women

Recently French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated that burqas are not welcome in France. Today we come to find out that Italy's government want to take things a step further. Hopefully these actions are just the beginning and they will lead up to a ban on Muslim immigration. Europe is not dead yet!

Italy Wants to Prosecute Burqa Women

MILAN – Plans by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s allies to prosecute Muslim women for wearing burqa, a loose outfit covering the whole body from head to toe, is infuriating the political establishment in the southern European country.

"A ban (on the burqa) would be xenophobic and discriminatory,” Mario Scialoja, the chair of the Islamic Culture Center of Italy, told Reuters late Thursday, October 8.

“The existing law should be enforced."

The far-right Northern League is pressing to amend a 1975 law to prosecute Muslim women for wearing burqa.

The law slaps hefty fines and up to two years in jail on people covering their faces with anything preventing their identification by police.

But the Northern League is now proposing to amend the law to ban “garments worn for reasons of religious affiliation”.

The far-right party also wants to remove from the law the expression “justified cause”, which has prompted courts to allow burqa on religious grounds.

Scialoja warned that a burqa ban would stigmatise Muslims, calling on Italian authorities to treat Muslim women with respect.

"We say no to a new law."

The burqa has been a hot issue in many European countries.

Last month, the Italian spa resort town of Montegrotto Terme banned the burqa.

A French MP has also proposed a ban on the wearing, sparking outcry among the Muslim minority and across the Muslim world.

Italy has a Muslim population of some 1.2 million, including 20,000 reverts, according to unofficial estimates.

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Muslim Woman Presses French Panel for Burqa ban

A brave Muslim woman has come out in support of France moving forward and banning the burqa. May she stay safe.

Muslim woman presses French panel for burqa ban
By SYLVIE CORBET

PARIS – Her voice trembling with emotion, the leader of an advocacy group for Muslim women and girls urged a French parliamentary panel on Wednesday to press for laws that would ban the wearing of Islamic body- and face-covering veils.

Sihem Habchi appeared as the first witness before a newly created parliamentary group studying Islamic clothing such as burqas and niqabs — part of France's effort to integrate its growing Muslim population while preserving its heritage and secular roots.

The panel, chaired by a Communist Party lawmaker, will hold months of hearings before issuing a report, likely by January. It has no power to draft laws but could recommend legislation restricting or banning women from wearing head-to-toe Islamic robes that mask facial features in public.

The panel was announced in June, a day after President Nicolas Sarkozy all but prejudged the debate, saying that the robes make "prisoners" out of women and won't ever be welcome in France.

A ban could spur a backlash. A 2004 law in France banned wearing Muslim headscarves at public schools, along with Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses. That law sparked fierce debate both at home and abroad.

Habchi spoke passionately of her family roots in the former French colony of mostly Muslim Algeria, and how France needs to do more to protect women and root out feelings of segregation.

"The survival of many young women depends on" new laws to protect them, she said. "They get around with their ghetto on their backs." She said such full-body veils contribute to "the separation of populations."

Habchi heads Ni Putes, Ni Soumises — Not Prostitutes, Not Submissive — an outspoken group fighting to improve the lot of Muslim women and girls in poor areas. The group's founder Fadela Amara, now the government's urban affairs minister, supports a ban on full-body veils.

The parliamentary panel is also to hear from supporters of the veils, though the list of witnesses has not yet been completed, the panel said.

Some Muslim leaders interpret the Quran to require women to wear a headscarf, niqab or burqa in the presence of a man who is not their husband or close relative.

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What Obama Could Learn From Sarkozy About Islam

During President Obama's Cairo speech he told the West, "Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit, for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear". While showing absolutely no concern for how oppressing the burqa is. Sarkozy stands against it, Obama fully supports it.

Burqa ban: What Barack Obama could learn from Nicolas Sarkozy about Islam
James Delingpole at Jun 23, 2009


Almost every idea that ever came out of France has been bad for America, from the structuralist philosophical gibberish which has poisoned US academe to the grotesquely over-regulated tax and spend socialism which is now ruining the US economy. But if there's one area where the French do get it SO right it's in their uncompromising approach to Islam.

President Sarkozy once again showed the way yesterday when in a presidential address to France's two houses of parliament, he said the burqa is not welcome in his country and should be banned.

As he rightly went on to say the full-body garment which makes women in Afghanistan look like a cross between a prison cell and a walking tent is "not a sign of religion" but a "sign of subservience." He added: "We cannot have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social ife, deprived of identity."

Compare and contrast, the appalling cultural appeasement of President Obama's speech in Cairo on June 4 when he boasted that the United States prized freedom of religion and would not "tell people what to wear." And there was I thinking it was the French who were supposed to be the surrender monkeys, not the Americans.

Was there ever greater proof that, where the great clash of civilisations is concerned, President Obama is turning out to be the Islamists' useful idiot par excellence?

Does Barack Hussein Obama really not understand that supposed "freedom" he is granting US Muslim women to wear the veil is in fact the most surefire way of guaranteeing their continued subservience to their men folk and their failure to integrate with the broader society?

It's for precisely this reason - would that the rest of Europe had the courage! - that France bans religious head coverings in state schools. France understands, as so many in the pusillanimous, multi-culti West do not, that female Muslim girls of school age need protecting from the heavy pressure put on them by male relatives to wear the veil. Banning the veil in French schools is not the sign of an oppressive state taking away religious freedom. It is a rare example of a government setting a moral example and standing up for freedom: a girl's freedom to choose whether she wants to spend the rest of her life in a kind of religious apartheid or whether she wants to integrate more closely with the host culture.

That President Obama cannot understand this reflects disgracefully on his supposedly vast intelligence. As a Democrat, he ought at the very least to be championing progressive values, and foremost among those values - for which generations of feminists have fought so hard - is female equality. So here, just to remind you, is what he really thinks about female equality - at least where America's Muslim girls are concerned:

"The U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it. I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality."

In other words: typical Obama lazy moral equivocation and disingenuous fluff. These "some in the West" who believe that "a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal" are straw men. They simply don't exist. In parts of the Islamic world, on the other hand, such men are rife. And hair coverings are the very least of their women folks problems. How does being dressed head to toe in a sack compare with being banned from driving; or murdered for trying to attend school; or being stoned to death for adultery because a bunch of local lads have decided to gang rape you?

America, you won't often hear me say this but in this particular case it's true. Where Islam is concerned, you have a lot to learn from those pesky cheese-eaters.

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Sarkozy Says Burqas are 'not welcome' in France

This is a followup to the "France Moves to Impose Ban on Burqa" article. President Sarkozy pulls no punches as he states his thoughts on the burqa.

Sarkozy says burqas are 'not welcome' in France
PARIS – President Nicolas Sarkozy lashed out Monday at the practice of wearing the Muslim burqa, insisting the full-body religious gown is a sign of the "debasement" of women and that it won't be welcome in France.

The French leader expressed support for a recent call by dozens of legislators to create a parliamentary commission to study a small but burqa growing trend of wearing the full-body garment in France.

In the first presidential address in 136 years to a joint session of France's two houses of parliament, Sarkozy laid out his support for a ban even before the panel has been approved — braving critics who fear the issue is a marginal one and could stigmatize Muslims in France.

"In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," Sarkozy said to extended applause in a speech at the Chateau of Versailles southwest of Paris.

"The burqa is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement — I want to say it solemnly," he said. "It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic."

In France, the terms "burqa" and "niqab" often are used interchangeably. The former refers to a full-body covering worn largely in Afghanistan with only a mesh screen over the eyes, whereas the latter is a full-body veil, often in black, with slits for the eyes.

Later Monday, Sarkozy was expected to host a state dinner with Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Al Thani of Qatar. Many women in the Persian Gulf state wear Islamic head coverings in public — whether while shopping or driving cars.

France enacted a law in 2004 banning the Islamic headscarf and other conspicuous religious symbols from public schools, sparking fierce debate at home and abroad. France has Western Europe's largest Muslim population, an estimated 5 million people.

A government spokesman said Friday that it would seek to set up a parliamentary commission that could propose legislation aimed at barring Muslim women from wearing the head-to-toe gowns outside the home.

The issue is highly divisive even within the government. France's junior minister for human rights, Rama Yade, said she was open to a ban if it is aimed at protecting women forced to wear the burqa.

But Immigration Minister Eric Besson said a ban would only "create tensions."

A leading French Muslim group warned against studying the burqa.

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France Moves to Impose Ban on Burqa

Recently President Obama had the Department of Justice issue a statement which was basically a license for Muslims to advance their religion across America. In the meantime France which is being overrun by Islam is changing course and starting to push back against the Islamic threat.

France Moves to Impose Ban on Burqa
By Lisa Bryant
Paris
19 June 2009

The French government says it may impose restrictions on wearing the burqa, or face-and-body-covering veil, if a parliamentary probe finds the garment degrading for women. The burqa debate is dividing politicians and the Muslim community.

Government spokesman Luc Chatel became the latest politician to wade into a growing debate over the burqa in France, telling French television on Friday the government may consider curbs on wearing the head-to-toe garment if it is found to be degrading for women.

A group of nearly 60 French lawmakers are asking for a parliamentary panel to consider restrictions on the burqa, which is also called the niqab.

Burqas are not at all common in France, but women can occasionally be spotted wearing them in the streets. And in this staunchly secular country, the garment has sparked a fierce debate, dividing the center right government and even the Muslim community. Many, like immigration minister Eric Besson, are airing their views in a series of radio and television interviews.

Besson is against banning the burqa. He says France already bars female civil servants from wearing veils or headscarves to work and girls wearing them to school. He supports education and dialogue, rather than more laws, to persuade women from wearing burqas.

But Cities minister Fadela Amera - a Muslim of Algerian background - is for legislation.

Amara says it's important to fight against extremism and she supports banning the burqa in France.

The head of the Paris Grand Mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, is also against the burqa.

Boubakeur says that Islam in France must be an open Islam. He says there's no need for women to hide behind the veil. But France's main French Council for the Muslim Religion is against a parliamentary inquiry into wearing the burqa, saying it stigmatizes Islam and Muslims.

The debate over the veil is an old one in France. The government's 2004 ban on headscarves and other religious symbols in public schools was highly controversial. Other European countries are also troubled by the burqa. The Dutch government for one has been pushing for a law to ban it.

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